Ka Baird

Thursday, January 26th, 8pm ET, ISSUE opens its 2023 season with an expansive gathering of improvising musicians with idiomatic approaches traversing guitar, percussion, voice, violin, trumpet, electronics, and more. Featuring an intersecting cohort across experimental improvisation, the evening welcomes back Bhutanese guitarist and improviser Tashi Dorji collaborating with multiinstrumentalist Alex Zhang Hungtai, the recent duo between artist, improviser, and composer C. Spencer Yeh and musician Kwami Winfield, and a solo performance from performer, composer and sound designer Ka Baird.

Ka Baird’s recent solo performances can be described as dancing somewhere in the undefined margins of experimental sound, performance art, and humor. Exploring extended voice and microphone techniques along with flute, electronic music and their rigorous physicality, Baird’s recent solo practice has evolved into a style all their own.

Ka Baird is a performer, composer and sound designer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances which include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. They create a present tense sound with a vigorous, ritualistic delivery that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. They work with many other musicians and artists, both in structured compositions and in their dedicated practice of improvisation. They are one of the founding members of Spires That In The Sunset Rise founded in Chicago in 2001. Their debut solo album "Sapropelic Pycnic" was released through independent Chicago label Drag City in 2017. Their latest recording "Respires" was released through Brooklyn based imprint RVNG Intl in October 2019. Recent national and international engagements have included performances at Unsound Festival (Krakow), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), MoMA PS1 (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), TUSK Festival (Newcastle, UK), Incubate (Tilburg, Netherlands), KRAAK (Brussels, Belgium), Le Guess Who (Utrecht, Netherlands), and the Festival Of Endless Gratitude (Copenhagen,DK). They have done residencies at Sonoscopia (Porto), Inkonst (Malmo), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), and Pioneer Works (Brooklyn). They were a 2020 recipient of the Foundation of Contemporary Art's Emergency Grant as well as a Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Roulette Intermedium in 2019.